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Story

Once upon a time I had a mother. She was born on Christmas day sixty-two years ago. She had three children: A son born in 1971; a daughter born in 1974; and another son stillborn in 1974--my twin brother.

At my mom's memorial, one of her colleagues (an anesthesiologist she worked with), asked me, "Who was the one with the twin?" The question caught me off guard and I stumbled over lists in my head. Relatives. Friends. Brother or sister pairings she may have mistaken for twins. And then finally: "Oh! That was me!" And then, more sullenly, "That was me." "She talked about the twin a lot when we worked the OR together," she explained.

I never did learn the story about how my twin brother had died. When I was little, I would ask my mom whether it was my fault. "Did I eat all the food inside your belly? Did I take up all the space?" My mom always assured me that I hadn't, but she would stop short of saying anything more. I don't know how long he lay by my side without a heartbeat.  I don't know what my mom was like during those first few months of raising me without him. I don't know. We never spoke about it.

Years later, after she was diagnosed with cancer, she would ask the air what it would have been like if he had lived. Years later from that, this past June and standing in front of the hospital where she was receiving yet another albumin infusion, I had the same thought. It was as if that missing something--another shoulder for both of us to cry on--was what was making life so much harder than it needed to be.

And maybe life would have been easier if we were able to take up that narrative thread instead of this fraying one. Maybe. But who knows. What we have is what is. We're driven by the narratives we envision, but only live out just the one. Choose your own adventure--or perhaps more like a mad lib. So tempting to go back and make it play out better, sound better, look better, feel better.

And so we live [insert adverb] ever after.

Drowning

"Daddy, no!!"

As if I were a five year old. I was next to my mom and her breath was slow and gurgling. When you die of respiratory failure, your lungs fill up with fluid until you drown. I still don't understand why.

I think it was about midnight, or maybe more like 11, when the gurgling started to get bad. With each inhale, it was like ... but there are no similes. It was like she was breathing through water because she was breathing through water. I called the hospice nurse who told me we should turn her on her side so the fluid might drain from her mouth. Slow the process. Okay. But we couldn't make it work. She was too heavy and we couldn't make her move to the right to the right to the right without her rolling back. Her eyes would flutter open--uncertainty, sadness, fear, yellow--but she was totally unable to speak. What words could possibly ... ? And then the foam started spitting from her nostrils. We tried to keep things clean. We tried to make her look comfortable, not knowing if she really was. And then we tried not to look, embarrassed for her, but more embarrassed for ourselves. I snuck a peek, and a longer glance, and then I stared, determined. Who are you? You are my mother. I called the hospice nurse again. "I'll be right over."

And we waited. Crying. Petting. Holding. And then my dad climbed up on the bed with a flashlight. A big, grey flashlight that was still sitting on the night stand the day I left to come back to Seattle. "Let me look inside ..." and "Something is blocking ..." And I cried in that way that was outside of myself. I sounded like a five year old.

Daddy, no. The light. Nothing is blocking. Water. Fluid. The light will be too hard on her eyes. Daddy, no.

You do strange things. We all do strange things. He stopped before he could begin, put the flashlight on the night stand, and stepped away from the bed.

The nurse came. She was quick and no-nonsense and careful and then my mom was on her side with a pillow against her back, propping her in place. The thick fluid oozing from the side of her mouth. Swabs and tissue to clear out the rest. And her breathing eased. The gurgle softened. For now.

I know. The nurse did what you wanted only weren't sure how to do. Are you okay? I asked him and apologized.

grading grading grading 2

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1 month

That night, before she died, I would, sometimes, put my head in her lap. On her thigh. And I would press the hand I held against my face. She didn't respond to these gestures. It was too late at that point--too much morphine, too much pain, too much too much. But her body was warm and she was my mother and it was more for me than for her. I knew these would be the last times I could put my head in her lap and feel like she, my mother, might protect me.

Today was hard. The last few weeks have been relatively okay, for whatever reason. But this morning and all through the day was incredibly not okay. Tears tears tears. Wanting to pick up the phone and call her. I miss her.

I was remembering how I asked her, once, whether I could be a Brownie Scout. I was in the third grade. What I remember most was her reply. She argued that she didn't have the time. "I'm not that kind of mother," she said. "Don't expect me to be that kind of mother." And, really, she wasn't that kind of mother. Not to me, anyway. And I learned to live with it--and she became proud of a daughter who found friends on her own and developed creativity in her own weird and badgeless ways. And then we grew close.

I think my mom never really knew how to relate to me or talk to me until I could speak to her as an adult. Still, it's funny to me that I have all of these photos and brief memories that suggest something entirely different--different than the broad narrative I have in my head of how our relationship played out. But so it is. And I'm glad for the mystery and the contradiction. I'm glad because it was never simple. My mom and I. And it gives me more to hold onto--to understand--to struggle to remember--to make sense of and yet never really know for certain.

It makes it feel like she's a living and moving memory rather than a still and soundless one.

But fucking still and soundless still.

Second person 2

I just got back from Trader Joe's. The last time I had been was down in California. It was the day we drove to the mortuary to talk to our "counselor"--who really was nothing more than a big guy in a black suit with a contract for us to sign. Every detail about the mortuary experience was silly--the blue surgical gloves the "handlers" (they probably have a sugary name, too) put on before doing the gymnastics required to get my mom's body from the bed to the stretcher; the way they looked at each and every one of our faces as they left the house, saying "my condolences"; the shiny, windowless, white mini-van in which they drove her body away; the cheap cardboard box we ended up choosing for her cremation ("We would prefer not to have her in a container at all," we explained, "but since we have to choose one ..."). Before going to the mortuary, we stopped at Trader Joe's to pick up some flowers to place with my mom's body. It would take two to five hours for the cremation to be complete. Slow-roasted?--my aunt joked uncomfortably. Flowers, we thought. My mom loved flowers.

My parents (should I say "my dad" now?), like me, live just about a block away from a Trader Joe's. While I was visiting over the summer and the week before she died, I would take frequent trips there to buy food--something special for my mom. She liked their cranberry juice. She liked their soups. And, when it became difficult to chew harder foods, I thought, "Maybe she would like the macaroni and cheese?" (I ate the package I had bought for her the night before she passed.) The last food she ate was from Trader Joe's--two bites of their tapioca pudding. These thoughts became rough scars on my memory the moment she died. I hadn't realized it.

I dragged a bit while I was shopping today. You get that disorienting feeling. You remember your old thoughts there, and feel your new self here, but you (something beside mind or body, apparently) are caught in between. First person and second person, only now moving aimlessly between the two. You can't go back and you can't forget. And so you stay in the middle, discombobulated by your body that keeps you here, where she is no longer, and your mind that's scarred by there, where she still is. Still is.

And so it is, yes, one foot in front of the other. But I think it's okay, sometimes, to drag your feet, kick and scream, beg and plead. To remember.

Remembering

My dad forgot it all. Or a lot of it. He showed up at my aunt's house tonight with a yellow legal pad (the same kind he used to record my mom's daily drug intake) to ask my aunt what happened. Each day. Each moment relived. My aunt said they got to Friday and I wanted to ask, "The Friday before or the Friday after?" But the conversation went somewhere else before I had the chance to ask and then the question was gone.

My short term memory is shot. It has been for weeks now. I have this theory that my brain is trying so hard to retain and reflect on my old memories and my strong memories that there's just no space right now for the everyday. These small things that don't matter--they just float through the cracks. And so I don't remember why I opened the refrigerator sometimes. Or I don't remember how I managed to get from point A to point B when the sidewalk was closed. I'm certain I just walked beside the sidewalk, on the street. But it doesn't really matter.

I have glimpses of my mom. Close-ups. Beginning, middle, end. Her yellow eyes, opening. The foam that would spit from her nostrils. Her tongue, rubbing against her teeth, bleeding. Two times, toward the beginning, I walked away from her bed grumbling, "This is ridiculous." It was--the amount of pain she was in and how little I could do to help her. And then more morphine and I didn't leave her side except for trips to the bathroom and to the refrigerator, where we kept the morphine and liquid ativan. I held her left hand all night long, carefully replacing my right with my left, and then my left with my right, when one got tired or cramped. When I had to leave the room, I would slip my hand out of hers and my aunt would slip her hand in. We never wanted her to feel that she was alone. Though what I really hope, sometimes, is that she didn't feel a thing.

Something about the tip of the iceberg. You don't want to share these things because they make you feel guilty, responsible, embarrassed. And you share them because you know there's so much more to it than that. So much more. And you share them because that's what we do to keep going. So you can try to be here with me. And so I can lean on you.

And I wonder what my aunt is telling my dad. What details does she offer? What does she leave out? What does she remember?

The question

Should I make dinner tonight as I had planned (butternut squash and banana kofta curry) or should I just stop somewhere for a bite on my way back home from the video store?

I can always make dinner tomorrow and I have no beer at home ...

Hrmph.